Comment by jmyeet

Unfortunately, the USB label is trying to capture too many things and they really should've learned their lesson with USB 2.0 but they didn't.

So USB 1.1 was 12Mbps (theoretical). USB 2.0 as 480Mbps (theoretical)... kind of. It got complicated because a distinction was made between USB 2.0 Full Speed and USB 2.0 Hi Speed. "Full" Speed was just USB 1.1 (12Mbps). USB 2.0 Hi Pseed was the 480Mbps. I assume they didn't want to confuse consumers who might wonder if they can plug USB 1.1 and 2.0 together but they just created more confusion. Nikon famously started saying USB 2.0 for Full speed, as just one example.

So the version number is useless to consumers and should never be used.

This got a whole lot worse with USB 3.0+ because more capabilities got added to the standard but not all cables supported them so you could look at a cable and have no idea what it could do. Capabilities include:

- Data. This started at 5Gbps for SuperSpeed but has gone higher with subsequent versions.

- Power (max wattage varied)

- USB Alt Mode (DP, HDMI or TB over USB-C)

So how do you capture at least 5 capabilities of a cable? You can't make a cable do everything. That's prohibitively expensive and also massively limits cable length.

Whatever the case, saying things like "USB 3.2 Gen 2" was not the answer.